Lendemer collecting specimens in an Araucaria forest in the high Andes of central Chile.JUAN LARRAIN, UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPTION, CONCEPTION, CHILE
One October morning in 2009, James Lendemer left New York City early to avoid traffic and take a leisurely drive to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in Pittsburgh. He had a loose plan about how to break up his long trip through the Keystone State. About halfway to Pittsburgh, the now twenty-six-year old graduate student at the City University of New York and research fellow at the New York Botanical Garden pulled his car off the highway and into Bald Eagle State Forest in Union County to search the area for lichens, his favorite organism and his thesis topic. Bushwhacking around the woods, Lendemer spied something out of the corner of his eye: a series of tiny cups clinging to a ...
